LOS ANGELES, Oct. 31 -- A framed portrait of the vice president fills the screen. A snooty art auctioneer asks an opulent crowd, "What will you give for Al Gore?" A Buddhist monk offers his bid, followed by a Chinese Red Army general. Ultimately, the auction house sells the Democratic nominee to a sleazeball Hollywood couple for $50 million.
Next, a menacing Texas oilman outbids a pharmaceutical industry lobbyist for George W. Bush.
Finally, Reform Party presidential candidate Pat Buchanan tells viewers, "The two parties are bought and paid for. We are not. This election day, help us build a third party that puts Americans first."
David Harrison, creative director of the Love Advertising agency, chuckles at his new commercial, the fifth television spot in Buchanan's $10 million taxpayer-funded campaign. "Nobody ever responds to it by saying, 'I disagree with that. Bush and Gore are not for sale.' And what that says about the American political system is a little spooky."
At age 24 years, Harrison is one of the youngest creative directors ever on a presidential campaign. But, then, there is little that is conventional about how the Buchanan ads were made. After all, in the fashion-driven advertising business, devising commercials for possibly the most unfashionable man in America poses unique challenges.
Harrison's boss is Brenda Love, founder of the 15-employee Houston agency that normally focuses on consumer accounts such as Gallery Furniture. She notes, "The Buchanan campaign would not consider agencies with political experience. Traditional political firms, they felt, were too tied to the major parties. Further, Buchanan wanted a fresh approach."
With the exception of Ralph Nader's parody of MasterCard's "priceless" commercials, Harrison finds the other candidates' spots "atrocious and boring. They're very vanilla, like what you'd expect from some local judge. It makes me wonder if political ad agencies even watch ads for consumer products. The conspiracy theorist in me imagines that they are actually trying to keep people from the polls."
Gore's and Bush's ads have generally competed for the mushy center of the political spectrum. They often try to appeal to undecided women voters who might be uncomfortable with confrontational politics. In contrast, the Buchanan spots aim at men by offering harsh humor and stark statements about provocative issues such as immigration and the gay rights activists' campaign against the Boy Scouts.
Love has booked Buchanan spots on such bastions of in-your-face comedy as "The Simpsons," "The Drew Carey Show," and the World Wrestling Federation's "Smackdown!" She also places ads on "Monday Night Football" and ESPN, and buys "roadblocks" on all the local news shows in targeted markets in 31 states.
In Love's first salvo, a man chokes on the meatball he's eating when he hears that Presidential Executive Order 13166 makes English no longer America's national language. Gagging, he dials 911, but merely reaches a chipper recorded voice telling him "For Spanish, press 1. For Korean, press 2." In the final shot, the dying citizen's dog forlornly licks his face while the 911 automated receptionist cheerfully advises, "For Swahili, press 12."
Harrison comments, "We wanted to do something attention-getting, after Buchanan lost a lot of time in internal Reform Party squabbles with John Hagelin and then was sidelined for weeks by illness. 'Meatball' addresses a sensitive issue via humor, which people are more open to."
The "Meatball" ad garnered a lot of free exposure when it was attacked as racist scare-mongering. "I think it's pathetic our taxpayer dollars are being used to fund a campaign of fear," said Art Torres, chairman of the California Democratic Party. "No such thing as bad publicity," Love laughs.
In the liberal advertising industry, though, Love Advertising runs the risk of being tarnished by its association with the vastly unpopular Buchanan. "Meatball" almost had Bob Garfield, who writes a column reviewing commercials for Advertising Age magazine, choking like the man in the commercial. "Jingoistic, intolerant, divisive and, leave us not forget, racist," Garfield commented as he gave the spot "Zero Stars."
Creative director Harrison, a recent graduate of the trendy Rhode Island School of Design, says he was concerned about how his friends in the art community would react. "I'm probably the most liberal person at this fairly conservative agency. But, once I saw the issue as Pat's right to get his ideas out, I became committed to his being fairly represented. When the two parties kept him out of the presidential debates, it got kind of personal. It's easy to write an ad for a guy who says what he believes."NEWLN:
